A New York Times editorial yesterday discussed Ohio secretary of state J. Kenneth Blackwell's latest attempt to stifle the vote. But his manipulations are entirely consistent with how Republicans like to win close contests: simply keep their opponent's supporters from ever actually getting to the polls. As Michigan Republican State Representative John Pappageorge said in a revealing moment in 2004, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election cycle."
Blackwell's new "emergency" regulations attempt to criminalize the standard methods of voter registration drives. Combined with his behavior during the last presidential election, when he threw out registrations because they were on the wrong kind of paper, this move should disqualify Blackwell from his current campaign for governor--as well as any future government position. Right now, the man is essentially deciding who can and cannot vote in his own race!
Not that this is so different from the notorious actions of Katherine Harris, who during the 2000 election served simultaneously as Florida's chief election official and the Co-Chair of the Bush campaign in Florida. It's now widely acknowledged that Bush won the state--and the presidency--by the margin of her efforts to fiddle with felon disenfranchisement lists, ultimately keeping thousands of mostly African American citizens from voting.
My friend Bobby Kennedy has written recently in an article in Rolling Stone detailing allegations of voter suppression in Ohio in 2004. I remember in the last few days of the 2004 election knocking on doors with my family in Ohio's Cuyahoga County and coming across the sordid results of those efforts. Misinformation among voters was widespread, including the impression that Democrats must vote Wednesday instead of Tuesday or that an unpaid parking ticket meant not being able to cast a ballot. A flyer circulated in black neighborhoods of Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the same period said:
MILWAUKEE BLACK VOTERS LEAGUE
Some warnings for election time
If you've already voted in any elections this year you can't vote in the presidential election.
If you've ever been found guilty of anything, even a traffic violation you can't vote in the presidential election.
If anybody in your family has ever been found guilty of anything you can't vote in the presidential election.
The time to register for voting has expired. If you haven't registered, you can't anymore.
If you violate any of these laws, you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you.
Republicans claim they're only preventing voter fraud--notwithstanding a near total lack of evidence nationally for such crimes. Look at the voter ID act from the conservative Georgia legislature. This latter day poll tax is supposed to deter voter fraud, but in reality works to disenfranchise the poor, the elderly, and minorities by making it difficult for them to obtain the necessary identification to vote. At the time this legislation was passed, Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox testified that during her nine years in office, she had not documented a single case of voter fraud at the polls by people pretending to be someone they are not.
That's because Republicans are upset, not with voter fraud but with voters. So many Americans line up on the progressive side of substantive issues, from health care to taxes, that if the whole democratic base was motivated to vote in their neighborhood polling stations, then Republicans would lose most elections.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) relieved some problems by requiring every state to maintain a database that is "a single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list." Such a list would stymie petty charges of voter fraud and would help ex-cons regain their right to vote. HAVA also created the concept of "provisional ballots," to be used when voters thought they should be allowed to vote but were not on the list--an important step towards universal same-day registration that is the norm in many democratic countries. Unfortunately, Demos, a leading voting rights organization, found evidence that some states ignored both the spirit and letter of HAVA's provisional ballot requirement.
That's why Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and John Kerry (D-MA) introduced the Count Every Vote Act of 2005. It provides federal guidelines and funds to avoid the long waits at the polls, flawed voter purges and felon disenfranchisement that characterize so many American elections. The bill also requires paper trails be available from all electronic voting machines and creates a national voting holiday to make voting even easier. Such a "Democracy Day" could be coupled with Veterans Day to give everyone the opportunity to participate in elections. HAVA combined with Count Every Vote could finally bury the Jim Crow shenanigans of every Harris and Blackwell and could put to rest the Republican reliance on outright lies and suppression to maintain their "tyranny of the minority."